Ex-Buckeye bench boss set to enter Hall

James Harrison motivated players to be their best

Former Miles Macdonell Buckeyes volleyball and basketball coach James Harrison is shown with memorabilia from various teams from his career. Photo Store

James Harrison was a winner no matter what he coached or where he went.

The longtime Miles Macdonell coach helmed Buckeye basketball and volleyball teams to 10 provincial titles — and even led a small-town Australian volleyball team to a state championship. Harrison also has 10 national medals, including six gold, through his work with the Buckeyes.

Music also an obsession for Harrison

Music is a big part of James Harrison’s life — so much so that he’d have done it instead of teaching if given a do-over.Harrison, who taught classical guitar and music theory at Miles Macdonell Collegiate, went on to play music at resorts in balmy regions later in life and recorded a dozen promotional albums, but wished he’d started sooner.“I think of my teaching career — and all I remember are hours, and hours, and hours in the gym, and I felt that I should have done something else,” said Harrison, who played with Taste of New Orleans here in the city. “I should have stuck with music. Music is easy for me.“I could play pretty well most instruments.”Harrison, who now plays guitar, piano, and sings, played saxophone in bands in Grand Forks, N.D. when he was attending the University of North Dakota on a hockey scholarship. “I was making bugger-all on this scholarship, and it took a couple practices a day with the (Fighting) Sioux, and I knew I’d never be a hockey player,” he said.Harrison said he first started playing in dance bands when he was 12, and often played live jazz throughout his teaching career.He now focuses primarily on piano, a love that was rekindled at a resort in the Bahamas. Harrison went down to go table-to-table and play requests on his guitar, which was damaged in transit. As he sat in the bar, the piano player didn’t know one song requested, but Harrison did, and the piano man encouraged him to play it.“My No. 1 philosophy in life is that if you want to be good at something, you must be obsessed with it,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of obsessions in my life, but they basically have been music and sport.“When it came to practising that piano, I just wouldn’t stop.”

-Falloon

On Jan. 27, the Manitoba High Schools Athletic Association announced the 72-year-old will be inducted into its Hall of Fame as a builder. The induction ceremony will take place May 10 at the Holiday Inn Winnipeg South (1330 Pembina Hwy.).

Harrison, a physical education and music theory teacher at the school, said volleyball was still "in its infancy" when he began coaching, and he saw the sport develop before his very eyes.

"It was still a high-ball game — set it from the middle to the outside," he said. "We changed that when I came in. We were bumping to the corner, and the setter wasn’t setting any back sets, only front sets — front to the middle and front to the outside."

Harrison added the Buckeyes were able to play a quick style that often left blockers with little recourse to stop the ball from its downward trajectory.

He was reluctant to name a championship that stands above the others, but feels his first championship, in 1972, gave him a great basis on which to build.

"I realized then that I had to have a really good captain, and I always had good captains. I had to have a really good setter," said Harrison, who said he only ever cut one player in his coaching career. "That same year, I realized that the most important thing was passing."

Harrison feels "skills are all learned in volleyball," and emphasized footwork and quick passing in order to prepare the team for stiff competition at the national level later that year.

Harrison, noting winning wasn’t the most important thing, said he would ask his players before each season if they wanted to win or just play for fun. Upon getting that go-ahead to challenge for a championship, he would strive to help the players be the best that they could, always finding areas of their respective games that could be improved.

"I got to a point to where I felt I could win all the time, but I knew it was going to take a hell of a lot of work," he said, noting the team sometimes practised three times a day. "I spent six nights a week with the game, and that included every Saturday. Sunday, I would come home, and in the morning, in a closed room by myself, and I critiqued every kid on the team.

"I pretty well said almost everything bad. However, I didn’t want to kill his desire, so I threw in something good. Sometimes it was just ‘your uniform was clean’ or ‘your hair looked OK.’"

Harrison told players’ parents at the start of the season he’d be seeing the players more than they would, and would not allow the players to have girlfriends.

In 1991, Harrison went to teach in Gin Gin, a town of about 1,200 at the time in the Australian state of Queensland. The school didn’t have a gymnasium, so the team practised outdoors in the grass, and eventually won the state championship, even beating teams from the much larger centre of Brisbane.

Harrison also coached gymnastics and badminton during his time at Miles Macdonell, a place he never initially expected to end up.

When attending the University of North Dakota, Harrison entered thinking he would end up as a doctor, but his opinion quickly changed after taking some medical courses, noting it takes a special kind of person — more than just an intelligent one — to serve as a doctor.

"I wound up in teaching as a fluke, because I didn’t know what to do," he said, adding he took sport-related courses in addition to education courses. Facebook.com/TheHeraldWpgTwitter: @HeraldWPG

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